Jonathan Trotter started making his own special blend of Spanish and English music three years ago.
At the time, he’d only been playing guitar for three years and was just beginning to dabble in music.
By midsummer of that first year, he had hit the top of the Latin-American charts.
Over the past three years, those initial hit singles from his first CD have led to other albums as well as a lot of jet setting around the U.S. and parts of Latin America for concerts.
Trotter, who had never considered music as a career before, was instantly thrust into a world of screaming girls, television and radio interviews and top reggaeton producers — in the Latin-American world, anyway. At home in the U.S., he was still Jonathan Trotter, a typical college student.
“The funny thing was … I never wanted to be on a CD. I never wanted to hear my voice,” he said. “I said, ‘There’s no way someone’s going to want to listen to me for 14 tracks in a row.'” But apparently, more than a few people did.
North Carolinian, born and raised Trotter, known as “el Americano” by his fans, grew up in Winston-Salem. He didn’t even speak Spanish until he was about 16 years old.
His parents own Sunnyside Ice, a family business his grandfather had started upon his return from World War II. Most of the people who work in the ice warehouse are Latino, according to Trotter, and that was where he first became exposed to Latin American culture.
Trotter, now a senior in Spanish, didn’t even know what he wanted to do with the rest of his life when he initially entered college. In fact, he wasn’t even a student at N.C. State.
Trotter first attended Appalachian State on a tennis scholarship. He had been playing tennis since he was 12; however, he said the sport lost its charm as his freshman year progressed. He decided to give it up and pursue other things, such as a social life, he said with a laugh.
“Tennis became more of a job, as opposed to a sport and a game, and I just wanted to enjoy it,” he said. “I sort of … burnt out on it. I haven’t really played much since.”
In keeping with family tradition, he decided to transfer to NCSU for the remainder of his college career. Trotter has a long legacy of Wolfpack alumni in his family — his father, his uncle and his grandfather all graduated from the University, and his sister was an NCSU student at the time.
El principio
Trotter said he worked a while for the family business before heading back to school. The additional exposure to Latino culture within the ice warehouses was one of the things that helped him realize he wanted to major in something dealing with Spanish.
According to Trotter, this exposure made the transition easier. He said he became more familiar with the culture and the words during the summer and then learned the grammar during the school year once he started taking classes.
It was during this time Trotter said he first became interested in making music. He saw a documentary about a classical music producer, and he said the whole process intrigued him. He began to see music as something he would be interested in checking out — but he never saw himself creating it.
“I actually never had any interest in music like what I’m doing. I’d played in bands of course; I think everybody does that once in their lifetime,” he said. “I love listening to music. I love all genres of music, but it was never like, ‘I want to go be a singer,’ or whatever. That never crossed my mind.”
But the more Trotter delved into music, the more he became hooked. He had been playing guitar for approximately three years, and played tenor saxophone in high school. However, when he started looking for others to play with, he found more and more that many people weren’t seriously interested. And those who were weren’t dedicated enough.
Then, in the spring semester of his sophomore year, the chance to make music with a social message came along.
Not your typical church trip
Trotter originally traveled to Ecuador for a mission trip with the Cary Church of God. He wanted to do something different to share the gospel, and he thought music was a good place to start. A variety of outreach teams went on the trip, and he got involved with one that would be going into local schools to witness. He decided to write songs in “Spanglish,” a mixture of English and Spanish, because he said it was something he hadn’t heard much of, and he thought is would reach out to the students.
“I wanted to do something new with the music,” Trotter said. “Because you’ve got your Spanish artists and you’ve got your American artists, but you don’t have really … anybody who goes in between and does them both.”
He began working on the songs for the trip around February or March, and while he initially planned to write only three or four songs, the project soon became much more.
“Three songs turned into four, four turned into five, five turned into 12,” Trotter said.
Eventually, he had a whole CD, and he even had a sponsor. An adviser at the University offered to sponsor Trotter’s music and paid for between 500 and 1,000 albums. Because of the sponsorship, Trotter was able to take the albums to Ecuador and distribute them for free.
“This is actually where the music took off. Because I had no plans on concerts, no plans on anything, but I had planned on staying three weeks to kind of help out my Spanish,” he said.
Because Trotter was handing out CDs left and right, he wasn’t sure into whose hands the CDs were falling. Within no time his music was being played on Christian radio stations across Ecuador. In a matter of weeks, it topped the Christian Ecuadorian charts.
“Within those three weeks … the music just exploded,” he said.
He found himself doing television and radio interviews for different Christian stations and concerts across the country. And according to Trotter, he was still trying to become fluent in the Spanish language.
When his initial three weeks were finished in Ecuador, el Americano brought his music — and his newfound direction — back to the U.S.
Getting the ball rolling
Once back in the U.S., Trotter began practicing and perfecting his reggaeton stylings.
He began getting offers to travel around the country and perform at local churches and big urban conferences. These performances took him all over: from Indiana to South Carolina to Tennessee to Texas to Georgia.
“When you go somewhere where you’re not known, you have to prove yourself. … At the beginning, everybody is always skeptical, but being an American doing Spanish and English mixed together — it’s completely new, and everybody got into it,” Trotter said. “I’ve yet to have a negative response.”
When the next summer came, he was ready to go back to Ecuador, and this time he was prepared. Through the church that helped him out last time, he set up tour dates with local Ecuadorian churches and venues.
And on his second trip it wasn’t just the Christian stations jamming his tunes — secular stations jumped on the bandwagon too.
“[It] was really cool because that’s what I really wanted to do,” he said. “Because you’ve got people who are Christian artists, but you’re only going to reach a certain sphere of people, and I want to be able to get outside that.”
His name in lights
According to Trotter, his experiences on the road have been more than enjoyable. They’ve taught him about his music, his fans and himself too.
One day he spent from 10 a.m. until 1 a.m. doing interviews, hopping from radio station to television station to radio station, only taking a short lunch break before doing it all over again. But Trotter said he doesn’t mind. He knows getting his name out there is important.
“The music industry is a big media industry,” he said.
According to a publicist he has worked with, artists have to master three facets of exposure before they can make it big: the music, the concert and the media after the fact, whether it’s a newspaper or a magazine.
“No. 1 you need to know who the heck this artist is. No. 2 he’s got to give a good concert, and No. 3 he’s got to be in the paper the next day,” Trotter said.
Trotter said the promotion aspect of being a musician is something he has been able to handle without a problem.
“When I get in front of a camera, or I get in front of a crowd, I get hyped up,” he said. “I don’t even think twice.”
However, he said that enthusiasm hasn’t quite found its way into his class persona.
“When I’m doing a presentation in class, I get nervous,” he said. “I’ve been in front of 4,000 or 5,000 people doing music, and in class I get in front of 20 people, I don’t even know them, and I just [freeze up].”
He even has some bum rush stories. Once, immediately after performing at an all-girl school of approximately 3,000, a group of girls rushed toward him.
“I turned around and ran,” he said. “They ripped one of my shirts, and they had to clear [the girls] out, and I had to get four very, very big, strong guys to get me out of there.”
He said the important thing as a performer, however, is to keep one’s cool.
“The main thing is that it’s just chill,” he said. “You can’t let it go to your head. When you let it go to your head, that’s when you know you start screwing up.”
And it isn’t too difficult to take that step back while in the U.S. Not too many people here are familiar with reggaeton, and Trotter said he keeps his double life on the lowdown because he enjoys the peace when he is at home.
He often doesn’t tell his friends about his music initially, because according to Trotter, music is not who he is. It’s what he does.
Saying no for a brighter future
After returning from his second summer in Ecuador he went immediately to Puerto Rico to study abroad.
“I was going there for school, supposedly, but basically I was going there to establish my contacts,” he said. “The music that I’m doing, it was born in Puerto Rico.”
Within a month and a half of being there, he had easily made all the right contacts and his music had been presented to top producers within major reggaeton labels such as Daddy Yankee and el Cartel Records.
A correspondent from Machete Records, another top label, contacted him about coming in and talking music. But after consulting a friend in the Puerto Rican music industry, he decided to hold off.
He asked this friend to critique his music, and the friend told him he was amazed by what Trotter had been able to accomplish, but that he had a few things he needed to work on — like the pronunciation of some words.
“He said,’There’s never been an American to conquer a language [in music like this] … you’re the first one to do it. They’re going to jump on this, but you need to change a few things,” Trotter said.
He said that friend, though, told him if he were to go to the producers that day, they would probably sign him on the spot. Being signed meant a record deal, a house, a new car and money, money, money.
And since he had totaled his car right before his last trip to Ecuador and spent all of his savings on getting there and back, it was a tempting offer.
“I was on the verge of saying yes, but then two weeks later, I was like, ‘I’ve got to finish my education because nobody can take that away,'” he said.
The homestretch
With only a few months left until graduation, Trotter looks forward to his musical future. He said he wants to create uplifting, inspirational music, as well something someone can just get down to. He is adamant about not using profanity in his songs and even more adamant about respecting women.
“I don’t think that you have to sell sex to be able to sell yourself,” he said.
After graduation, he plans on moving back to Puerto Rico and further pursuing his music — and everything that happens along the way, well, that’s just part of the experience.
